


The Past is Prologue

by SavingShepard



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, Kaidan Alenko POV, altered timeline, mostly canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-23 02:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20884994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SavingShepard/pseuds/SavingShepard
Summary: His name was Kaidan Alenko, and he had moved on.At least, that’s what he told himself as he stood and tried to blink away the vision of her that stood in front of him.





	1. the Citadel

“I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel.”

Kaidan glared up at the small motion-sensor activated speakers above his head and made a concerted effort to tamp down the rage that had started roiling within his gut. It had been two years and he still couldn’t escape people trying to use her image for profit. He suddenly remembered why he had avoided the Citadel like the plague, memories of challenging shop-workers and disabling VIs flooding back to him.

“Are you looking for any weapons or armour in particular?” A cheery voice greeted him from the kiosk, oblivious to his inner turmoil.

He pointed his glare towards the salesperson that had precipitated towards him, took a deep breath, and asked what he had always asked when dealing with such advertisers. “Have you no respect for the dead?”

He was somewhat proud that the question seemed calm and measured on the surface, his voice no longer cracking at the thought of her death.

The salarian’s friendly demeanour dropped as they froze in their approach and stammered ‘W-what?’ His beady eyes looked him up and down, lingering on his weapon at his side, the tendons in his throat tightening and loosening at rapid speed.

Kaidan smiled inwardly, glad that this confrontation was likely to go easily. He thrusted his jaw upwards towards the speakers above the door. “She died two years ago, and it’s only now that you’re using her to attract clientele?”

The salarian blinked at him, his green eyes wide and scared, and the silence stretched for long enough that Kaidan was starting to concede that they weren’t the sharpest tool in the shed.. They blinked at him again and made a strange clicking noise that may have been his equivalent of clearing his throat. “But she came in several days ago? The advertisement was part of a discount I gave her and her - uh - crew?”

Kaidan thought someone must have been pulling his leg with a good VI. The phrase, alongside any conversation with this salarian, could have been pieced together from any number of public interviews she had had, especially given the various interviews she’d had after saving the Council.  
After all, if she were wandering around the Citadel, news outlets would have _something_ to say about it. The Alliance would have a lot to say about it. _He_ would have a lot to say about it.

The salarian babbled on hurriedly, picking up speed once Kaidan didn’t interrupt him. “Having seen the newsvids then I thought Commander Shepard was d-dead too, but I asked for confirmation. She even told me to check with C-Sec, said they’d had the um...the same ‘misconception’.” His tridactyl hands pulled at his pristine white work uniform as he spoke, his white and umber-speckled head bobbing as he spoke.

“And I did.” The salarian hurried back to his kiosk, turning the screen for him to see. On it was a message confirming that a certain Alliance Commander A. Shepard had, in fact, arrived that day.

Kaidan was quick to dismiss this too. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time someone used identity theft to bluff past C-Sec, no matter how ‘high-tech’ they claimed their systems to be - and that was assuming the salarian’s interface wasn’t hacked just as he was asking for confirmation - but for the sake of curiosity, asked “What did she look like?”

The salarian, mollified by the semblance of acceptance and happy to ensure a lack of property damage, barrelled on. “She had a visor covering the left half of her face, with deep scars covering the rest of it. Dark...orange hair. Black, Elanus risk Control armour." He sighed wistfully. "The Guardian armour-type.” Kaidan almost smiled at the tinge of awe in the salarian’s voice at the mention of the armour, because of course this is what would have been the most memorable.

Kaidan nodded. At least the person doing their impersonation had done their research. Nondescript but expensive armour would be befitting of a Spectre, and they likely knew that a weapons and armour specialist would pick up on any fake N7 armour on being, well, fake. He sighed and resigned himself to the knowledge that his free time on the Citadel might have to be used to chase down a semi-realistic Shepard impersonator. 

It was only later that he stopped to wonder why anyone would want to impersonate her to get a weapons discount in the first place. He did his best to ignore the doubt niggling in the back of his mind, the heady hope that was carving itself into the space the doubt left. He _especially_ didn’t listen to the small voice at the back of his head that told him both the scars and the visor would have stopped most from recognising her. And really, C-Sec wasn’t that easy to fool anymore.


	2. Only mostly dead

Kaidan stared at the figures lurking in the distance, listening hard as he tried to part through the ominous buzzing of the strange bugs the ‘Collectors’ had brought with them. He took a deep breath and held it as he counted to ten. When he opened them again, the figures were closer to his vantage point, their voices clearer as they carried across the plain of yellowing grass towards him. “Check for survivors - or stragglers.”

He gulped as his stomach dropped to his feet. His senses hadn’t lied the first time around - he would recognise that voice anywhere. With the planet’s solitary star behind her, it was difficult to see anything except for her backlit profile with a copper glint as she turned to her squadmates.

There were two ways any contact would go, and neither of them boded well for him:

  1. It wasn’t her but a clone, or an impersonator. If the rumours were true, she would be a _Cerberus_ clone or impersonator, and that was ten times worse.
  2. It was her - and he would have to deal with all the implications and ramifications that came with that realisation.

Emotionally speaking, the first was by far the easiest to deal with. He had dealt with similar impersonators trying to make a quick buck before. But his gut told him that this wasn’t the case here.

An explosion of sound and the ground rumbling below him shook him out of his thoughts, and he ducked behind cover and watched as the ugly, amorphous Collector ship jolted into the atmosphere, leaving a deafening silence in its wake. His stomach clenched as he watched the ship go, cursing the fact that this was the second time he had to watch them leave death and destruction behind without so much as a scratch.

“It’s clear, Commander. They’re all gone now.”

Her copper hair fluttered in a golden halo around her ears as she removed her helmet to look around. He wanted to tell her that that was a rookie move, joke that she should be more careful. Instead, he quietly walked over to them with a heaviness in his step that he had never imagined when he had fantasised about seeing her again.

“No! don’t let them get away!” Delan ran out from his shelter towards her, gesturing madly at the ship.

He could no longer see them as he ducked behind crates, but their voices were clear now that the air was devoid of the hell-sent buzzing. “There’s nothing we can do. They’re gone.”

“H-Half the colony’s in there! They took everyone... j-just _do _something!”

“I did what I could - ” He could hear the palpable regret in her voice, the gentle sympathy for Delan’s losses.

“More than most, Shepard.” A spike of jealousy reverberated through him as he heard Garrus’ unmistakeable gravelly voice. A billion questions ran through his mind in quick succession. Could it really be her? After all this time? Where had she been? And had Garrus been with her the whole time? Why him?

“Wait…” He could almost hear the cogs in Delan’s head turning in the silence the Collector ship had left behind. “Shepard. I know that name.”

He quietly walked over to them with a heaviness in his step that he had never imagined when he had fantasised about seeing her again.

“Sure, I remember you.” Delan’s voice dripped with poison and disdain, his features twisted with anger. “You’re some big Alliance hero, aren’t you? Fat lot of good it did us.”

He stepped out into the foray, holding up a hand to show he was friendly until he was fully in the light. "You're in the presence of a legend, Delan. And a ghost."

Delan looked at him like he was crazy – and perhaps he was, with the multitude of questions and emotions fighting for space as his body threatened to explode from it all. Then his face twisted into a sneer. “Of course _you_ made it. I’m _sick_ of you Alliance types. I’m outta here.”

There was no masking the smile that lit up her face as she turned towards him, blinding in its show of emotion. “Kaidan!” It soon disappeared behind a grimace of pain followed as the unnatural orange scars on her face shone brightly with the movement.

His heart shuddered in his chest. Unbidden, his feet moved him closer to her as his brain froze over, trying to understand exactly what was in front of him.

Suddenly, after two years, she stood in front of him. She breathed the same air, smiled the same smile.

He couldn’t resist pulling her into a tight embrace, to feel a solid body against his. He indulged himself with a few precious seconds before pulling himself back to reality. 

“I thought you were dead, Shepard.” He squinted at Garrus as he stepped out of the hug, ignoring the urge to hold on and never let go. “We all did.”

Dark threads of jealousy and betrayal coiled together in his abdomen as he thought. Why hadn’t she said anything in all this time? Why had she let him mourn for so long? And why was Garrus part of her squad, and not him – what made Garrus a more important?

Perhaps, like many rumours had said, she had lived but later undertook a deep undercover Spectre mission – or maybe her ‘death’ was a ploy all along to move on with her life, do something different. Maybe she had been alive and well this whole time, living it up on a pleasure planet, and had never cared for him whatsoever – but he quickly shook off those poisonous thoughts. Her scars, and the way she looked at him, told a different story. The way she looked at him, relief mixed with guilt, at least showed that there was still some modicum of care left for him.

He took this moment to actually look at her squad – Garrus he knew already, of course, but even he looked different, with new scars decorating his scales and a hardened look in his eye that had never been there before. The raven-haired woman behind her looked on, levelling him with a cold and impatient glare that would have chilled him if he wasn’t already fuming. Then he saw the insignia on her armour, the elongated black hexagon with orange wings. Cerberus.

The fight went out of him as quickly as it had appeared, a cold anger clinging to his bones as the more heated emotions left him feeling deflated. A strange wave of calm rushed over him, soothed the fingers that itched to hold her, pacified the urge to check her pulse and investigate her new scars.

If she was working for, or even alongside, Cerberus… something had gone terribly wrong. Maybe those rumours were actually true. Maybe Cerberus _had_ brought her back. Or worse, maybe she had left the Alliance - left _him_ to work for Cerberus, after all they had been through fighting them in the first place.

When he looked at her again, he found himself searching for signs of the Shepard he once knew. The Shepard he ha loved. Instead, he saw all the details he had missed before: the white collar peaking out at her throat, the angular corner of a Cerberus logo pulled askew by her armour. The scars on her face thrummed with an unnatural orange reminiscent of the Cerberus orange, reminding him for an uncomfortable second of Saren’s deep facial scars.

Apprehension coursed through him and he wondered whether she had been similarly indoctrinated – just by different forces.

“Two years, Shepard.” He took a breath to calm his unsteady voice. “What happened?”

“I died.” Her brow knotted, and she winced a little with the movement. “Cerberus rebuilt me.”

Kaidan did not have the time nor the words to question exactly what ‘rebuilt’ meant; it make her sound like a machine, a tool. Not a human to be brought back to life. He desperately wanted to ask he why she hadn’t said anything, why she hadn’t contacted him, why she had left him behind to mourn her…but he was in no mood to give those thoughts to a public arena, and was especially wary of giving the Cerberus agent beside her any more fodder against him – or her, for that matter. Cerberus. Cerberus had her in their clutches, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

The way she answered left him to wonder how much she knew herself. How much of the Shepard he knew was still there?

“You’re with Cerberus now.” He took another step away from her. He felt only anger now. Confirmation had compacted his confusion, his hurt, his ache to know more, compartmentalised it into pure anger – an emotion he could control, funnel into whatever he needed it to be. “Garrus too. I can’t believe the reports were right.”

“Reports? You mean you already _knew_?” Garrus asked, accusation clear in his voice. Kaidan turned his head to glare at him, and thought that his accusation was rich of him, and fought to keep his composure, fought to keep himself in check before he lashed out.

“Alliance Intel thought Cerberus might be behind the missing colonies. I got a tip that this might be the next one to get hit.” He looked back at her and paused at the unguarded emotions on her face. “There were rumours – rumours that you were alive but working for _them_.”

“I don’t answer _to_ them.” She answered with an air of finality, irritated at the implication that she had something to do with the deaths the Collectors had caused. “We never aligned before, but now we have the same goals for once – stopping the Collectors. They brought me back so I could help save the human colonies, and they’re giving me the resources to do it.”

He scrutinised her and wondered where the Shepard he once knew had gone. If Cerberus had brought her back – and the rumours were true that they spent billions to do it – then it wouldn’t have been just to stop the Collectors. With that money, they could have funded an army to do the same thing.

His next question came out as a hiss, fury and hurt warring to know the answer. “Do you really believe that? Isn’t that just what they want you to think? You’re using their resources, their intel…” wearing their armour, he wanted to say. He wanted to shake her out of her delusions, and wondered if that was a lost cause. Maybe she truly believed she was there to help the human colonists – she was on Horizon, after all – but something else was afoot, something niggling at him further as he surveyed the group in front of him. He especially wondered why she hadn’t approached the Alliance the minute she was able. “Maybe you think you owe it to them for bringing you back.”

If they had had her for two years – and been the ones to ‘reconstruct’ her – he shuddered to think what they could’ve done to her, her brain, her very essence, with the tech they were rumoured to have. If they could bring a dead woman back to life, then they could do just about anything.

He shook his head. He needed time, space, air to breathe and to think that wasn’t thick with death, smoke and memories of the past.

“You’ve turned your back on everything we believed in.”

“Kaid-”

“You betrayed the Alliance.” He glanced behind her head as Garrus moved closer to her, another spike of jealousy, this time barbed with betrayal, driving home. “You betrayed _me_.”

“Kaidan, you’re- ” He glanced back at her. ‘Being dramatic’ he thought for her as he watched her shoulders straighten and her chin jut forwards. “You _know_ me. I have reasons to believe that the Collectors are working with the Reapers… and you’ve seen first-hand the damage the Collectors caused here. They’re giving me the resources to deal with this, and that’s it.”

He tilted his head at her as he tried to understand her position, and failed. Cerberus, no matter their resources or shiny guns and armour, had always been the antithesis of everything Shepard stood for. The Shepard he knew and loved, at least. Were their resources worth this?

“I want to trust you, Shepard.” He jutted his chin out towards the woman behind her. “But I don’t trust Cerberus. They could be using the threat of the Reapers to manipulate you.”

Once he would have thought her above all such manipulation, but now he questioned how he could have been so naïve.

“I could use someone like you on my ship, Kaidan. It’ll be just like old times.” Her eyes met his, pleading for him to join.

His brain pulsed and spasmed with pain. This was all too much. “No, it won’t.” He ignored the guilt that flowed through him freely as her face fell. He reigned in the instinct that urged him to stay, that questioned whether she would change her mind about Cerberus if he did. “I could never work for or with Cerberus.”

He stepped further away and began to turn away from her, ignoring the voice in his head that told him that if he joined her he could keep her safe, on the right path. “Goodbye, Shepard. Be s- …be careful.”


End file.
